"When do you s'pose there'll be skating?" he asked his mother again and again, for, as yet, there was only a "skim" of ice on the pond.

"Oh, pretty soon," his mother would answer. "You mustn't go skating when the ice is too thin, you know. If you did you would break through, into the cold water."

"And that would spoil my skates, wouldn't it?" asked the boy.

"Yes, but besides that you might be drowned, or catch cold and be very ill," Mother said. "So keep off the ice with your new skates until the pond has frozen good and thick."

"Yes'm, I will," promised the little boy, and, really, he meant to keep his word. But as the days passed, and the weather was not quite cold enough to freeze thick ice, the little boy became tired of waiting.

Every chance he had, after school, he would go down to the edge of the pond, and throw stones on the ice to see how thick it was. Often the stones would break through, and fall into the [Pg 86] cold, black water with a "thump¹!" Then the boy would know the ice was not thick enough.

"I don't want to fall through like a stone," he would say, and back to his house he would go with his new skates dangling² and jingling³ at his back, over which they were hung by a strap⁴.

But one day, when the boy threw a large stone on the ice of the pond, instead of breaking through, the rock only made a dent⁵ and stayed there.

"Oh, hurray!" cried the boy. "I guess it's strong enough to hold me now! I'm going skating!"

However, first he started to walk on the edge of the ice near the shore, and when he did so, and heard cracking sounds, he jumped quickly back.

"I guess I'd better not try it yet," said the boy to himself. "I'll wait a little while until it freezes harder."

So he sat down by the edge of the pond to wait for the ice to freeze harder. But as he sat there, and saw how white and shiny it was, and as he looked at his new skates, which he had only put on in the house, that boy couldn't wait another minute.

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